Star-Eating Power Plant Could Be the Sign of an Alien Civilization

Some binary star systems may be hiding something. Much like the Death Star was no moon, one of the two stars in a semi-detached binary system may be no star at all. Instead, it may be a giant power plant for a highly advanced civilization, syphoning energy off its stellar "companion" to meet the needs of an energy-hungry alien population.

This radical concept, envisioned by Free University of Brussels postdoc Clement Vidal, is called a Starivore. Think of it as a variation on the Dyson Sphere.

One of the big barriers to becoming an interstellar society is simply the raw energy that would be require to build really advanced technologies and propulsion systems powerful enough for space travel and a reasonable time scale. If an alien civilization had become highly advanced, the thinking goes, then they must have solved the energy problem. So, finding a starivore out there may be the evidence we need to find a vast, technologically superior civilization, ones who need to cannibalize entire stars to meet their needs.

Of the models of stars Vidal claims are out there, there are 2000 such semi-detached binaries that could qualify as a starivore. Maybe some next-next-generation optics could take a close and tell us whether that, indeed, is no star.

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